


The Stone of Protection

by Dagron



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:27:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22294780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dagron/pseuds/Dagron
Summary: She remembers how the first runestone came to be: an old woman handing it to her granddaughter, a gift, a prayer. She'd picked the stone from the Whispering Woods. It had been no different from others around, but she'd painstakingly compared it to all of them, rolled it in her hand, held it to the light... It only gained its power when the granddaughter took the gift with blind reverence and love. The old woman called it a Stone of Protection.
Relationships: She-Ra & Adora, She-Ra & Mara
Kudos: 9





	The Stone of Protection

For as long as there has been magic on Etheria, there have been runestones. In fact, there probably hasn’t been a time when magic existed there without a runestone.

She remembers how the first runestone came to be: an old woman handing it to her granddaughter, a gift, a prayer. She'd picked the stone from the Whispering Woods. It had been no different from others around, but she'd painstakingly compared it to all of them, rolled it in her hand, held it to the light... With infinite patience the old woman hand carved the surface of the stone, chipping away at its outer shell until its rune was embedded into it, a beautiful nonsensical mesh of lines and dots. It only gained its power when the granddaughter took the gift with blind reverence and love. The old woman called it a Stone of Protection. It would stay by her granddaughter's side even when the old woman passed away.

“Nonsense,” the girl had replied through her tears. “You’ll live forever.”

She wasn’t wrong.

It was just one of many miracles that came with the birth of magic. The stone did its job and did it well. It protected the girl until she chose to pass it on. It protected the girl that followed until she chose to do the same. The stone passed from hand to hand, its surface becoming smoother, rounder, as its power grew and grew... For each girl added to the magic, with belief, with their faith, with the sheer power of their will. The Stone of Protection gained an inner glow, and it would share it with its bearer. The glow acquired a name.

She Ra.

-

Other runestones came into being. People took notice of the magic and began to see it in places it had not been, but now was. The saw it at the heart of a tree, or in the beauty of a pearl resting in the harbour bay. They saw it as the glittering of stars in the snow at the top of a glacier, they saw it in the shard of glass that formed in the desert after a strike of lightning. They saw it in the glow of the multiple moons in Etheria's skies... In the toss of a net, in a breeze... The more people who believed in their power, the greater these runestones became.  
  
The Stone of Protection took note. She made friends. She found out more about the magic born to her fellow runestones. They gained names too.  
  
The Heart Blossom was a peace-loving spirit, a nugget of green lifted out of the ground by the roots of a young tree. It did its best to provide nourishment to the living beings around it. Plants thrived near it, and animals and people felt joy. She Ra knew that should anything threaten those under its protection, it would uproot mountains to save them.  
  
The Pearl was a moody thing, prone to the changing humours of the tide... But it was clever, and it was strong. What it couldn’t deflect, it would shield its protégés from. It provided safe transport and fun to those under its watch. It would sing, sing, sing such beautiful songs.  
  
The Fractal Flake, it had a bite to it, but a beauty too. It didn’t suffer fools, but it also loved to play. Those it cared for were given sanctuary, provided with armour and fortitude to help them brave the cold of snows in order to enjoy its many gifts. It didn’t like to be left alone.

The Black Garnet was an interesting one: a runestone that hovered, its heavy end lifted to the skies by the magnetic forces flowing through it. It could sting, if you weren’t careful, but it gave its love fast and freely. For all its fierce aura. She Ra couldn’t think of a runestone more generous and vulnerable.

There were many other runestones, of course, some so small as to seem invisible, some made of wood, of metal. She Ra's favourite though had to be the Moonstone.

There was something particularly reassuring about a runestone whose focus was bringing people together, no matter the distance, no matter the time spent apart. The Moonstone, She Ra felt, was the closest in essence to her runestone.

But it, like all the other runestones, was still an it.

It is about then that some of the inhabitants of Etheria started figuring out how to do magic themselves. They’d bypass the need for a runestone. They’d draw the power from their hearts. Their hands would dance in the air, drawing shapes, pouring the light of their self-belief into runes that spoke of the spell they wished to cast. They created a language of shape and will. Their magic could never hope to surpass that of even the weakest of runestones, but She Ra was thrilled: this was born of her magic, without being of her. These casters, sorcerers as they called themselves, had learnt from her essence and come up with something else, something flexible, something that would grow and grow.

The other runestones took note too, but they weren’t so thrilled. It was as though they could sense something She Ra couldn’t. They were wary, and she couldn’t understand why, not for the longest time.

-

The Stone of Protection passed from hand to hand. Its surface smoothed further, it became smaller, bluer, as other runestones grew in size, in importance. Though the Stone of Protection was still treasured, fiercely, by its bearer, people began to forget its origin. She Ra didn’t mind so long as she remembered. She remembered a lot back then: she remembered every girl that had carried her, their every strength and beauty. Each one was as much a part of her as the rune now long worn off the surface of her stone, as the stone itself was. The stone gained other names for a time: The Stone of Memory, the Maiden's Jewel, the Sword or sometimes Shield of She Ra...

And then the day came, where She Ra couldn’t protect her bearer.

She Ra wishes she could remember them properly. All that she recalls now is how much they wanted to protect someone else. They succeeded, this she knows, but at a price. The bearer died, and the stone was left all alone.

People found her stone, of course, and took it. They fought over her and sold her, some even tried to break her, but no one could carry her. She'd been a gift, and now, she had no one to offer her as one.

Unless she chose to offer herself.

The thought took seed. She took her time. She watched and learned from within the stone. She began to understand why the other runestones had been so wary of Etherians learning magic for themselves.

Not all Etherians were as kind as the one who made her. Not all Etherians were as good or selfless as the girls that carried her. There was an ugliness in the world, a shadow that had always existed. She understood now why the old woman had felt the need to make her, why she felt her granddaughter needed protecting. Goodness wasn’t an inherent quality of existence. Goodness could be eroded, just as the surface of her stone had been... But goodness could always be found, provided you gave it a light to shine by.

And so, the Stone, that had grown dull and weak from her time alone, made her choice. She set off a spark, sang a song, and sought out the one she felt would most benefit from her protection... The one who could share her glow furthest with the world and push back the shadows that had grown and grown in the years her stone had lain dormant.

She Ra found her bearer and offered herself to her. She wishes she could remember that girl now. She knows she had been special.

The other runestones sensed She Ra's return. They rejoiced. For all that they’d grown stronger in her absence, they’d needed her. Without her glowing example, they came to resent each other, competing, when they should have worked together. In realising this great shame, they chose to honour She Ra’s return by following her example. They sought out Champions to wield their power more fairly than they could. For the first time since She Ra’s creation, she found herself with friends that could protect her in turn.

She Ra no longer allowed her Stone of Protection to shrink. She poured all her memories into making her bearer the best they could be. The Champions of the other runestones became leaders, and She Ra became theirs.

It was a golden age, or so She Ra thinks it must’ve been. Kingdoms were born. People turned to the chosen Champions and called them Princesses, Queens and Kings. She doesn’t remember much of that time now, though she does remember this: they wanted to give her bearer a kingdom, an empire, and her bearer wisely said no. Unlike the other runestones, She Ra’s Stone of Protection was not fixed to any one place. She Ra could not and should not be tied down. She Ra herself balked at the idea that her magic ought to be passed down through the family line as had been decided with the Champions. The Stone of Protection was gifted to friends and strangers alike in her long line of bearers.

And after her time alone, She Ra knew that she could not allow her bearer to be a leader of people. It was one thing to lead the Champions of Runestones, to maintain their balance. It was another to offer her protection to someone with power, to someone who wouldn’t need it, who could twist and misuse it.

So, She Ra and her bearer refused to rule a kingdom, refused to rule all the kingdoms as was then clamoured for. It threatened to turn to war, the shadows looming high as She Ra sensed her bearer's certainties wavering, the pressure to please and appease building and pushing and crushing her will.

And then the Moonstone intervened. Its champion stepped forward, and offered themselves to be the leader amongst leaders, on condition that She Ra be the one to take them down, should they ever forget their duty to bring people together, to protect.

There was a story there, She Ra knew. One of great love, respect, and pain. She remembers a gratitude so great pouring through her that from that day, the bearer of the Moonstone's power held not one, but two gifts: the power of the Moonstone, and the same gift that had been given to the creator of She Ra's Stone of Protection, that of eternal life, with the caveat that they were only protected from illness or old age. She Ra's respect for their promise meant that she had to allow any future She Ra the ability to take them down should need be. It turned out to be a caveat that many of the Moonstone’s champions took advantage of. Unlike the old woman, the chosen of the Moonstone did not cope well with grief. Just like the bearers of She Ra’s stone, they were just as prone to self sacrifice in the name of those they cared for.

She Ra saw the old woman sometimes. She lived on the Whispering Woods still. She rarely remembered making the stone, but she always remembered She Ra in some form or other... Her bearers always appreciated that the old woman never addressed them by the name of their combined glow, even if the old woman often used the wrong name. She Ra knew it was never a mistake. She loved that the old lady still remembered the bits of her that had passed on.

It all changed when the spaceships arrived.

-

Technology wasn’t really a thing before the Eternians. Sure, they had techniques and skills and craft... People would invent new ways of putting materials together to effect change. But Etheria had nothing like the technology Eternia brought with them: tiny microscopic robots that changed the shape of objects on command, light displays that captured a likeness, that emulated life; they even had the means to reach the stars.

What really captured She Ra’s attention, beyond the sheer wonder they instilled in her then bearer, were their writings. They looked familiar. Stilted lines and dots, crisscrossing in aesthetic patterns across their doors, their ships, their walls. It wasn’t until she saw them taking notes, writing down the names of the magic they saw and marvelled at in the same way the Etherians marvelled at their tech that she knew.

Their writings were the same as that that made her rune.

It didn’t make sense. She’d felt the old woman’s mind as she’d been carved. The lines and dots had been random, pretty. Their meaning had been in the intention, not in the scientific arrangement of signifiers. And yet, the way they wrote her name, the letters She Ra, was identical to the way her rune that had been carved on her Stone of Protection all those millennia ago.

The Eternians, it turned out, for all their technology, were refugees. Once their scouting team made it back to their fleet, they returned with diplomats, scientists, engineers... In exchange for teaching Etherians some of the rudiments of their technology, they were hopeful that they might get to stay.

She Ra doesn’t remember much of that time. Just glimpses, brief flashes... A couple of arguments, a long trek up the then wooded mountains of Dryll, a hand, a smile.

She thinks there was an Eternian scientist... Purple hair, unbridled enthusiasm, a dedication to their work that somehow had captured the heart of her then bearer. She Ra only remembers that they’d trusted that person, relied on them...

She Ra remembers the betrayal.

Their smile had been so tender as they held her bearer’s hand. Her stone was in their fingers, its glow wavering with the uncertainty of the situation.

“Trust me.” The words convinced She Ra’s bearer. The stone was gently placed into the device; three triangles of green data crystal around the triangular bed holding the Stone of Protection in place...

For a moment, the data crystal merely hummed. She Ra remembers. She’d never felt a tingling like that before. The way the tech hummed and pawed at her stone, it was as though... And then the green crystals grew warm, their hue changing to a bright red as the scientist adjusted a dial.

There will never be a word to describe that pain. She Ra has only twice felt anything similar since... A fire raging through her being, intruding, transgressing into the very depths of her magic as her bearer cried out and fell to the floor. Anger consumed the Stone, twisting her very heart. Betrayal. How dare the scientist betray their trust like this? This wasn’t technology. This wasn’t a scanning device. This was magic, alien and soulless. This was an act of war.

-

She Ra doesn’t know what happened next. Only that her whole essence burned and lashed out. Everything is blacked out, not blurred like the other holes in her memory. She knows absolute shame for the first time when she thinks back to that moment.

She never sees that bearer again, knows not their name, or face... All she can say for sure is... that is when their connection was ruptured. Her gift is stolen away by an Eternian who sends her away in a box to a spaceship hiding in orbit behind one of Etheria's moons.

**Author's Note:**

> It's practically never that I'll write fic directly on my phone - I'd normally sooner write in my notepad by hand and retype it all up... But something about this fic idea, once I'd jotted the first few lines down, just wouldn't let go of me.
> 
> I would love to hear your thoughts on this!


End file.
